Be Conscientious

August 2025

I saw a graph from the FT circulating wildly around X recently. It is from an article that has analysed the rapid decline of personality traits in the past decade, especially among young people. Neuroticism, carelessness and distraction are up, while agreeableness, extroversion and helpfulness are down. Why this is happening is a separate debate that I won’t focus on, although it is probably caused by a mixture of short form content, on-demand entertainment, and AI chatbots, all accelerated by years of pandemic lockdowns.

There was a decline in one trait though that struck me as particularly jarring: the collapse in conscientiousness. Why is it important for people to be rigorous when we have incentives that keep society ticking over and ensure that most people study or work even if they do not want to? Why be hardworking or disciplined when a post-scarcity age of abundance will overcome your shortcomings?

Conscientiousness is about consistency. Being consistent in your work, regardless of your interest. Being consistent in your commitments, regardless of your mood. Being consistent with your goals, regardless of your motivation. And if you cannot be consistent, you will be unhappy because you will have no mental anchor. Being conscientious will give you a sense of purpose no matter how trivial your task is.

When one exhibits conscientiousness, they are projecting a kind of trust. Inwardly, they are trusting themselves to stick to their commitments and to do what they know to be right. Outwardly, they are expressing a willingness to adhere to norms and agreements that involve other people, even though one cannot control others’ behaviour. If you become unconscientious then you are creating a low-trust environment not only around you, but also within your own psyche.

The wonder of conscientiousness is that it is a trait that everyone benefits from. Depending on one’s circumstances, you may have an interest in developing unconventional personalities: the neurotic startup founder, the disagreeable lawyer, the introverted student. But there is no one who should strive to be unconscientious. There is nowhere in human society where there are increasing returns for ill-disciplined behaviour. Whatever your craft, however seemingly insignificant, it will pay to be disciplined and meticulous even if you dislike it.

I will concede that you shouldn’t necessarily be conscientious in everything you do. Sometimes you will be given pointless tasks where it is not worth doing it. In this case you are still being conscientious because you are doing the right thing by not wasting your time. This is only true however if you are doing so to free up time to focus on other ventures that you know to be more worthwhile. Let’s say you’ve put in minimal effort into a test that won’t be marked. You’re still conscientious if you do so to instead focus on revision for an upcoming exam, but you’re clearly not conscientious if you scroll on TikTok instead. That’s the other simplicity with conscientiousness, all it requires is following through with a simple choice, not a value judgement. Everyone knows what the right course of action is.

As a trend mostly among young people, it is worth considering conscientiousness with respect to studying. Education is a linear, limited payoff space. You get a grade, which can be no more than 100%, and which has no concern for your creativity, effort, or integrity you put in to it. I personally studied economics and political science at university, which I quickly developed a strong disliking for. Subsequently I put in the minimal effort to ensure I got good grades, and wasted three years of my working life when I could have had the satisfaction of developing excellence in something else (I wish I studied engineering for what it is worth). It is already a failing of education that there isn’t a strong incentive to be conscientious. That will now collapse in an age of AI chatbots automating anything digital. Historically, schoolchildren are told to be conscientious for its own sake, as a virtue. The benefits of it, and therefore incentive for it, don’t fully arrive until you enter the non-linear, unlimited payoff space of adulthood. The problem for society here is that personalities are shaped easily during childhood. There is a lot of stake for the educational institutions and governments that can combat decline this early on.

As personality traits to continue to decline, a consolation for ambitious young people is that the returns to being conscientious are higher than ever. You will stand out and excel for being the individual who strives for self-improvement, reliability and discipline when others do not. Above and beyond one’s own success, the truly conscientious people will reimagine society in a way that revives our personality traits. Then we might see a more positive FT graph published in 2040.